Writing every book is like a purge; at the end of it one is empty ... like a dry shell on the beach, waiting for the tide to come in again.

But luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.

Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.

We are all ghosts of yesterday, and the phantom of tomorrow awaits us alike in sunshine or in shadow, dimly perceived at times, never entirely lost.

Men are simpler than you imagine my sweet child. But what goes on in the twisted, tortuous minds of women would baffle anyone.

I wish I was a woman of about thirty-six dressed in black satin with a string of pearls.

Women want love to be a novel, men a short story.

A dreamer, I walked enchanted, and nothing held me back.

Life was a series of greetings and farewells, one was always saying good-bye to something, to someone.

I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say.

The point is, life has to be endured, and lived. But how to live it is the problem.

When you give each other everything, it becomes an even trade. Each wins all.

The mind is the strongest tool we have to help us secure the riches within the universe.

If you don't know how to take care of your own needs, when you try to give to others, you are giving from a bankrupt account.

A house is your third skin, after the skin made of flesh and clothing.

Religion is what a man does with his solitariness.

I had professional stunt racers teaching me how to drive

It is not expected of critics that they should help us to make sense of our lives; they are bound only to attempt the lesser feat of making sense of the ways we try to make sense of our lives.

When "Search and Destroy" by the Stooges came on as a Nike shoe commercial, I got physically sick. That song meant the world to me, and I didn't feel this was the way it ought to be used.

Believe me when I say that some of the most amazing music in history was made on equipment that's not as good as what you own right now.

... one of art photography's most vigorous enterprises--[is] concentrating on victims, on the unfortunate--but without the compassionate purpose that such a project is expected to serve.